Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should we move our documentation off subdomain?
-
Background:
We have a popular open source e-commerce platform at http://spreecommerce.com. Right now the documentation is on http://guides.spreecommerce.com. We have "edge" documentation (for stuff that's not yet released) on http://edgeguides.spreecommerce.com but since it's largely duplicative we've told google not to index any of the edge stuff (via robots.txt).
Question:
Should we consider moving the guides under the main website under /docs or something like this? There's a ton of great content that people often read to learn more about the platform. Seems like we might be diluting our juice a bit to have it on a separate domain. WDYT?
-
IMO it is more about ease of use for the end user and less about SEO. If you have a good help sub-domain, it will automatically redirect users to the product site.
Still If I had to make a decision, I would have compared metrics like pages/visit, time on site, bounce rate of help site and main site. If help metrics are better than the main site, adding content to main will add value else it will deplete value. Also if it is only one product, it makes sense to have help within main site bur for multiple products, you should be better off with sub domains (product wise and not docs vs main).
Please see and decide what is best for your users first, keeping SEO at second priority. Hope it helps.
- Nitin
-
I really like Jason's response and I watched the video. Still, from sheer gut instinct, I would move those docs to the main domain. Call me crazy, it's just seems like the right thing to do.
-
The debate about subdomains vs. subdirectories has been going on for a long time. You have to be careful about reading old stuff, because the best answer has changed over time based on changes to search algorithms.
I.E. There was a time when "link-juice" was treated separately on each sub-domain, so subdomains could dilute your effort. There was also an era, when Google would allow a max of two results per sub-domain on a SERP, and so people would use multiple sub-domains to get the potential for more links on a SERP.
At the moment, they appear to be roughly equivalent And so the decision usually comes down to other convenience issues rather than SEO benefit In your case, since you're already on a sub-domain I probably wouldn't bother to move them and do all the re-directs, ect...
I'm basing this advice, largely on Matt Cutts video answer here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=_MswMYk05tk
-
Yea, Sean
I agree that you should move it under the main website. I am not an expert at this but I can definitely see how it can potentially dilute your juice from the main website. It almost seems like it should be on the resources page. I see how you guys have " Showcase| Case Studies| Hosting| ..." I would stick it between " Case Studies" and " Hosting."
What was the rationale behind putting it on a different domain?
-
Hi Sean,
My gut reaction is "Heck Yes!" I would move the documentation, but perhaps, if you can convert it to .pdf file types, so you can embed a link back to your relevant page or main website from inside the document. This will also keep a link in the document if someone decides to share it off site somewhere, making for some handy links back to your site.
Interested to know what others think!
Dana
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Move a Wordpress Site to HTTPS with Bluehost
HI Guys, do you think that the following guide is enoght to move a bluehost wordpress site to https in a seo best practive way? https://www.shoutmeloud.com/free-ssl-certificate-bluehost-hosting.html Basically their steps are: Install SSL on Bluehost panel Install Really Simple SSL Wp Plugin Edit Your .htacess File & Add The Code For HTTP To HTTPS Redirection Update All HTTP URLs In Database To HTTPS Using Search and Replace Plugin Use Broken Link Checker plugin & use its redirection module to find links to 3rd party sites with HTTP that should now be HTTPS. Last thing to do Submit your new HTTPS site to Google Search Console & submit your sitemap. Update your profile link on Google Analytics. Update your website links on social media profiles & anywhere else they exist. This step you can do in pieces in the coming days. Read this guide to learn more about HTTP to HTTPS migration & fixing mixed content. If you disabled Who.Is guard for your domain name, you can enable it now. Do you know a better practical guide for wordrpess? in term of usefull plugins to handle the migration? Tx to everyone!
Technical SEO | Jul 30, 2018, 8:03 AM | Dreamrealemedia0 -
Google Indexed a version of my site w/ MX record subdomain
We're doing a site audit and found "internal" links to a page in search console that appear to be from a subdomain of our site based on our MX record. We use Google Mail internally. The links ultimately redirect to our correct preferred subdomain "www", but I am concerned as to why this is happening and if it can have any negative SEO implications. Example of one of the links: Links aspmx3.googlemail.com.sullivansolarpower.com/about/solar-power-blog/daniel-sullivan/renewable-energy-and-electric-cars-are-not-political-footballs I did a site operator search, site:aspmx3.googlemail.com.sullivansolarpower.com on google and it returns several results.
Technical SEO | Aug 1, 2017, 5:10 AM | SS.Digital0 -
Impact of Medium blog hosted on my subdomain
I am using the Medium blogging platform to blog, but it is pointed to my site and appears at blog.mysite.com. Since the content is hosted on Medium and pointed to my subdomain via an A Record / CNAME / etc... 1. Will my domain get credit for backlinks to the blog content? 2. If Medium changes in the future and no longer points to my subdomain, will I lose all of the backlinks I've built up?
Technical SEO | Dec 8, 2016, 5:28 AM | davidevans_seo0 -
Subdomain as News Section instead of Source in Google News?
Hi, trying to dig into Google News for a large site, mostly containing news.
Technical SEO | Mar 1, 2016, 2:27 PM | m.m
The structure of the site network is subdomain.domain.se, and each subdomain has it's own brand with it's own news: x.domain.se
y.domain.se
z.domain.se
etc... Each brand/subdomain is more or less to equate with its own subjectfield/section. In Google News every subdomain is configured with it's own Site Source url, but also having the set up with one section with the same url. It seems like they're getting conflicts in Google News, Google can't always figure out which news article to which brand. Example: an article owned by brand A, but it is sometimes happens that articles getting labeled as brand B in the news SERP, though the link takes you correctly to brand A. I am thinking that this config in News Publisher Center may be a problem? Anyone having any thoughts if that would be better if we delete all source urls except for domain.se-brand and then put all the other subdomains as sections? www.domain.se x.domain.se y.doamin.se z.domain.se Any smart thoughts on this one? Or anything else that could make this wrong labeling (all content included images are hosted in same domain for example). Regards,
Magnus0 -
Are subdomains a good seo strategy for a multistore e-commerce?
Hi there I'm wondering what is the best strategy to work with multi-stores on magento: to use or not to use subdomains? Suppose we have the www.website.com and we configure it to use multistore. The url base will not have the store id on it so it will not be like www.website.com/store1 and www.website.com/store2. It will simply rely on the user session so if we have two categories for each store it will acces using: www.website.com/category1 (for store 1) www.website.com/category2 (for store 2) The homepage will allways be set on www.website.com so we should have a single page for several "home pages" (depending on the user session / store he is accessing). I guess this is not a good option if we want to rank for different keywords (for each store). So I was wondering if it is a good solution to set: store1.website.com store2.website.com This way we have 2 "home pages" each one able to rank. Does it make sense? Is it good or bad for seo? Another option I was considering was: www.website.com (for store 1) store2.website.com (for store 2) store3.website.com (for store 3) www.website.com/blog (for blog) Can this work? Good or bad for seo? best regards
Technical SEO | Jan 24, 2017, 8:49 PM | qgairsoft0 -
Robots.txt on subdomains
Hi guys! I keep reading conflicting information on this and it's left me a little unsure. Am I right in thinking that a website with a subdomain of shop.sitetitle.com will share the same robots.txt file as the root domain?
Technical SEO | Feb 19, 2015, 2:59 PM | Whittie0 -
Tutorial For Moving Blogger Blog From Sub-Domain to Sub-Directory
Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial for moving a blogger.com (blogspot) blog that's currently hosted on a subdomain (i.e. blog.mysite.com) to a subdirectory (i.e. mysite.com/blog) with the current version of blogger? I'm working on transferring my blogger blogs over to wordpress, and to do so without losing link juice or traffic, this is one of the steps I have to take. There's plenty of tutorials that address moving from blogspot.mysite.com to wordpress and I've even found a few that address moving from blog.mysite.com (hosted on blogger) to a root domain mysite.com. However, I need to move from blog.mysite.com (blogger) to mysite.com/blog/ - subdirectory (wordpress). Anyone who knows how to do this or can point me in the right direction?? Thanks.
Technical SEO | Apr 9, 2012, 12:31 PM | ChaseH0 -
Subdomain and Domain Rankings
I have read here that domain names with keywords might add a boost to your search rank For instance using a completely inane example monkey-fights.com might get a boost compared to mfl.com (monkey fighting league) when searching for "monkey fights" There seems to be a hot debate as to how much bonus the first domain might get over the second, but leaving that aside for the moment. Question 1. Would monkey-fights.mfl.com get the same kind of bonus as a root domain bonus? Question 2. If the answer to 1 above was yes would a 301 redirect from the suddomain URL to root domain URL retain that bonus I was just thinking on how hard it is to get root domains these days that are not either being squatted on etc. and if this might be a way to get the same bonus, or maybe subdomains are less bonus prone and so it would be a waste of time Thanks
Technical SEO | Oct 18, 2011, 8:56 AM | bThere0